Pick up a piece of shell. Can you look at it, wonder at its delicate beauty, without saying how pretty it is, or what animal made it? Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live with the feeling behind the word, without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time, a spring that knows no summer.--JK
It happens, but usually for just a brief second. The verbal machine's engine gets going just a couple moments after the perception of the object. There are some occasions when the mind is arrested entirely, usually by some immense beauty that the mind doesn't even try to wrap up in words.....at least for some time. It is timeless, psychologically, but chronologically, the I pops up and starts noticing that the experience is happening and then the timelessness ceases. My reaction to this is usually one of sorrow because I feel I am "missing out" on a beautiful experience. That of course is the greatest irony. The feeling of "missing out" can only be created by the "I" that popped up into the experience. It's like a splinter pierces the delicate skin and then says, "geez, why has this delicate beauty been splintered by this splinter?"
I feel I am now coming to more experiences where this immediate reaction of sorrow is becoming a bit more translucent. Instead of getting on the expressway to Destination Discombobulated, I find myself seeing that I'm heading on to that expressway and then letting that perception allow for the space to not get on that expressway. There is a grace about this process that is difficult to write about. Not an emotional difficulty, a verbal difficulty to describe it. So, I'm just letting it be, very very simply and subtly.
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